


These Images That Fill My Head

by Killedbycroc



Category: All Time Low
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-12
Updated: 2012-05-12
Packaged: 2017-11-05 06:07:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/403231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Killedbycroc/pseuds/Killedbycroc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Standing up, Alex said one last thing to me before he left. “Hope your head’s alright. You’re too pretty to be hurt.” As I watched him walked away, the biggest smile was left on my face, and suddenly, I didn’t feel so scared anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Images That Fill My Head

  It was another busy shift in the hospital, and once again I had been left on my own, having no other option but to carry on with the mountain of paperwork that grew each time that I blinked. I had been a doctor (okay, so I was still technically an intern) in the hospital for about six months now, and I had learnt that no two days would ever be the same as each other. Glancing back down at the stack of paper in front of me, I sighed and sat my pen down by the side, before resting my head on the desk – I know that this was the only opportunity I would have to get anything remotely close to sleep that night. Letting my eyes flutter shut, the dream world began to wash over me and transported me away from the stress of reality.

  I wasn’t surprised that I dreamt during my sleep – that was a common thing for me to do – but the dream that I was having made no sense to me, because it was a memory of mine, possibly the earliest I could remember. I was three years old again, and sat in a hospital in England (where I used to live before moving to America about five years ago), crying my eyes out because I had cracked my skull, and when you’re that young, it’s hard to think past anything except that immediate pain. To make matters worse, my parents had both disappeared off somewhere, so I was left on my own, gauze limply trying to soak up all the blood.

  I was so busy being scared about everything, that I didn’t notice when a boy, not much older than me, sat in the spare space next to me. “Hey,” he said to me, “what’s wrong?”

  “My head hurts,” I replied, only able to state the obvious, whilst wondering why this boy was talking to me.

  “Well I bet my hand hurts more than your head,” he told me as he held up his hand, meaning that I could see the dried blood hiding the fresh blood. I cringed, and he could tell I didn’t like the sight of it. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. So how did you do it?” he asked, half-changing the subject.

  “I was running, and I slipped on some rocks,” I explained. “After that, I don’t remember much, except that it hurt a lot. What about you?”

  He thought about it for a second, and at the same time looked at his hand, though he made sure I didn’t see it again. “I caught it on the edge of a knife. I knew I should have listened when they said it was dangerous, but I wanted to prove them wrong.”

  “How come you’re not crying then? I mean, doesn’t it hurt a lot?”

  “It does,” he eventually answered, “but I’ve got to be brave, cus crying’s not going to do anything to make it all better. You have to be strong, and everything will be okay for you, promise.” Not knowing what to say, and too shy to say anything else anyway, I stared down at my feet, not making eye contact with him. “Do you feel better now? You looked really upset before.”

  “Yes,” I embarrassedly admitted. “But that didn’t mean you had to come and talk to me.”

  “Yes it did, otherwise it would have made me sad that you were sad.” That made me smile, just because he didn’t have to care.

  “Alex!” Turning round, I saw a man shouting in our direction. “Come on, we’ve been called in.”

  When I heard that, I felt more than a little sad. “Don’t worry,” he said, clearly noticing my change in expression, “just remember what I said, and everything will be okay.” Standing up, Alex said one last thing to me before he left. “Hope your head’s alright. You’re too pretty to be hurt.” As I watched him walked away, the biggest smile was left on my face, and suddenly, I didn’t feel so scared anymore.

 

  Caught up in my dream still, it took me a few seconds to realise that I was being shaken awake. “Sleep on your own time, you’ve got patients to see.” Walking off before I could properly understand what was being said to me, I lifted my head off the desk, moving all of the paper back into a half-recognisable pile.

  “God, I need a cup of something,” I muttered to myself as I stood up, heading to the lounge to grab a cup of tea. Once I got in there, I was shocked to see how quiet it was in there; normally, about five or six different people would be fighting over the television remote, never mind the coffee machine, but I was on my own for once, proof of just how busy it was tonight.

  Being glad that I could have a few minutes to myself without being interrupted, I sat down, and took a long sip from my tea, the peacefulness of it all relaxing me in an instant. However, it was all very short-lived, as some senior doctor that I only half-knew walked in. “What are you doing in here?” he asked me.

  “I needed to wake up,” I replied, praying that I wouldn’t end up with a lecture on how it is important for us to take all of our duties seriously.

  “Well you’ll have to do that later,” he sighed as he went to grab himself a cup of coffee. “Patient’s just come in – male, twenty-four, received a large knock to the head. It’s probably nothing serious, but they brought him in just in case. You should be able to handle it on your own.”

  I froze. “Wait, on my _own_?” Staring hysterically at him, I anxiously waited for his reply.

  “Yes, on your own.” It sounded like he was talking to a little kid. “You’ve got more than plenty of experience to be able to handle this on your own, plus we are severely understaffed tonight.” Noticing that I still looked like a rabbit caught in headlights, he offered me one last piece of advice before leaving to go back to whatever he was doing before. “If you’re really unsure, then just ask, but only do that if you actually do not know what the hell’s going on with him, okay?” As he shut the door behind him, I sighed heavily, took one last drink from my tea, and tipped the rest down the sink before heading out of the door also.

  Grabbing his chart, I briefly glanced through it prior to entering his room – everything on there looked normal, so it should be a simple check-over, I thought to myself. I took a couple of breaths as I entered, telling myself that I wasn’t going to mess this up, and that everything was going to be okay – that must really make me seem like a good doctor. Opening the door, I saw what I expected – a young man sitting on the bed, an ice pack on his head – but he was definitely cute, what with his brown choppy hair, and warm smile greeting me. “You my doctor?” Clearly he wasn’t shy either. Shame the same couldn’t be said for me.

  “Yes.” I tried to exert some authority in my voice, but it got trapped in the back of my throat, along with most of my breath. Walking over, I could see how his eyes glimmered with the same excitement as a child’s; in fact, it seemed very familiar to me... Now’s not the time for distractions, I told myself, and I concentrated on what I was supposed to be doing. “So how did you hit your head then, sir?”

  He stared at me, unbelieving. “Seriously, you’re calling me sir? Geez, I’m not that old... Just call me Alex.” Once again, that cheeky grin spread across his face, and I was finding it hard to organise my thoughts logically.

  “Okay then... How did you hit your head, Alex?”

  “Well,” he sat up straight, grabbing hold of the ice pack, “I was performing the last song of the set, and I went to stand on some speakers at the edge of the stage, when they just seemed to slip from underneath me, and then I hit my head on something and blacked out for a bit. Then I woke up, finished the song, and got made to come here.” Pretending to be writing something down, I nodded along, but the truth is, there was something about this guy that was bugging me; I was certain that I knew him from somewhere else, and it was fairly recent too, but I just couldn’t place my finger on it.

  “Okay... Now, I want you to tell me where it hurts.” Removing the ice pack, I could see the bump on his head, but didn’t touch it straight away, checking the surrounding area instead first. No reaction came from him, so I went for the bump.

  “Ow!” His head jerked forward – safe to say I had touched a sore spot.

  “Okay...” Writing something down on his notes, I sighed lightly, before producing a small torch from one of my pockets. “I’m just going to check your pupils now. Stare into the light.” I shone the light in and out of his eye, and he began to make small talk with me.

  “So you’re from England, huh?”

  “Yeah. Guess the accent gave it away.”

  “Kind of. So how long you been over here then?” It was hard to think, what with his eyes distracting me and all.

  “Five years. Every single one of them spent on studying medicine, so I still don’t really know a lot about here.” I could hardly believe that I admitted I have a pathetic life to a stranger.

  “Well you’re making a difference for people, so your life’s not that bad.” Noting down that his pupils reacted normally, I sighed lightly again. “And England’s cool. I used to live there.”

  I really couldn’t believe that. “ _You_ used to live in England? But your accent...”

  “I was only young when I came over here, so I guess it was easier to pick it up, you know.” I don’t know what it was, but something clicked in my mind.

  “Wait... I think I know you.”

  He snorted. “Loads of people ‘know me’ – I’m in a band.”

  “No,” I shook my head, “not like that. I think I met you back in England.” Alex stared at me, confused at what I was saying. “We were in a hospital, I was only like three at the time, and you came over to talk to me...”

  He continued to stare at me, but eventually the look of realisation dawned on his face. “Don’t... you can’t be her... You’re too old to be her!”

  “Hey!” I yelped. “You were complaining before when you said you weren’t old enough to be called sir, so don’t be calling _me_ old!” Once the words were out, I clamped my hand over my mouth, realising that I probably shouldn’t be so loud. “Sorry... I can get a little too hyper sometimes.”

  At first, I thought he’d probably ask for another doctor, but instead, I was greeted with the sweet sound of laughter. “Trust me, you haven’t seen hyper till you’ve seen my friend Jack.”

  Letting a grin spread across my face, I busied myself by looking at his notes again. “Right, everything seems to be okay, but I want to put you in for a CT scan just to make sure, and I would also advise that you stay here overnight, so that we can monitor you as a precautionary measure.”

  “Sounds good.” For someone who had taken a massive bump to the head, Alex was in a surprisingly cheerful mood, especially with that big goofy grin plastered across his face. “I should be out by the morning though, right?”

  “By the way everything looks, then yes,” his smile was certainly infectious, as I couldn’t help but to return his grin.

  Asking for a nurse to walk him down to the CT scan, I walked back to my paperwork, joyfully adding the extra files on top of the rest; as I grabbed a set from a few hours ago, I tapped my pen anxiously against the table, even less able to concentrate on them than before. All of the words in front of me seemed to jumble into an illiterate mess, and so I sighed heavily, throwing my head onto the desk in a flurry of papers. “Hey, what’s wrong with you now?” Tentatively lifting my head in fear of being bitched out by one of the senior doctors, instead I thankfully found Aimee, my roommate and fellow intern, standing to the side of me with what appeared to be a frappuccino.

  “I can’t bloody concentrate on these papers.” Reaching happily for the frappuccino, my hand got swatted away.

  “Hands off, this is mine.”

  “You mean your Starbucks-obsessed boyfriend bought it for you to make up for missing another date with you.” I knew I’d hit the nail on the head as she glared at me evilly from behind her straw, making sure I took pain from my lack of iced drink.

  “Listen, Mikey said he was sorry about that, okay? And besides,” she declared with an air of boastfulness as she sat down in the seat next to me, “I get a free frappuccino out of it, so it’s a win-win situation.”

  “For you,” I mumbled ungratefully under my breath, still tapping the pen furiously against the table from my inability to write.

  Clearly annoyed by it, Aimee snatched the pen out of my hand and set it down, far enough away from me so that I couldn’t reach it without standing up. “Anyway, you never answered my question, so what’s wrong with you?”

  “I don’t know... there was this patient I saw half an hour ago, and it turns out we’ve met before, and...” I trailed off, not knowing how to put what I was feeling into words.

  “...And what? You’ve gotta say, I’m not psychic y’know.”

  “He’s _gorgeous_ , Aimee,” I sighed as I once again slumped forward, my head in my hands.

  Of course, as soon as I said that she decided to actually pay attention. “Wait, _what_?! Dude,” she set her frappuccino down, a sure sign that she was being serious, “tell me everything, and I mean _everything_.” So over the next fifteen minutes, I explained it all to her, from my weird dream to the conversation to the way his hair dreamily fell over his face – once I was done, I looked at her expectantly, waiting for her to cast her judgement over the situation. “Hmm,” picking up her frappuccino again, Aimee swirled it around with the straw, contemplating what her final thoughts would be. “Seems that you’ve got quite the big crush on this guy.”

  “Why does everything end up being about relationships with you?”

  “Fine,” she stood up, heading towards the door, “don’t believe me, but I’m telling you, when he leaves here in the morning, about an hour later you’re going to regret not having done anything about it.” Not knowing what to say, I hung my head, staring down at the papers in front of me; the door closing brought me back to reality, leaving me to feel alone and confused once more.

 

  “Wha...?” For the third time that night, I awoke with a shock, suddenly finding myself aware of my surroundings; no need to worry, however, as I was still painfully alone. “Geez, I can’t wait for this fucking night to be over,” I mumbled to myself. Getting ready to escape to the on-call room for some sort of decent sleep, I was stopped when the door swung open and the nurse from earlier was stood there holding Alex’s scans.

  “These look normal,” she drawled in a bored tone, “but you should still double-check them.” Shoving them into my hands, she walked away as fast as she could, glad to have dumped the responsibility on somebody else. Even though second opinions weren’t normally necessary, I still looked over them, and yes, I could confirm that they were absolutely fine – now all I had to do was go and tell Alex the good news, and then I could go and sleep for another five minutes before being woken up to go and deal with more patients.

  The corridor that I walked down to reach his room seemed to go on forever, almost as if I was trying to put off seeing him. No, I told myself, that’s stupid, just like Aimee’s theory was. There’s absolutely _no way_ that I could have a crush on a guy that I knew for like three hours, even if he was totally adorable... Shaking my head to escape from the daydream, I found myself standing outside his door once again. Taking deep breaths, I opened the door as fast as I could, treating it like ripping a plaster off, and yet again there Alex was, sat on the bed (minus the ice bag this time) smiling up at me. “So what’s the news then, doc?” I found myself becoming completely speechless, having to look at the scans in my hand to remind me why I was even here in the first place.

  “Um,” I absent-mindedly spoke, desperate for the right words to return to me, “the scan didn’t show up any abnormalities, but we’re still going to keep you in overnight to observe for any signs of... concussion.” Great work there, I sarcastically told myself, now you seem like the one with brain damage when you can’t even remember a basic medical term.

  “And how are you going to do that?”

  “Huh?” Just one look at him made me utterly forget every single reason for why I was even in the room.

  “How are you going to make sure that I don’t have concussion?”

  “Oh. Um,” I stumbled, trying to find my disorganised thoughts once again, “someone will come in and do a basic check-up on you every two hours or so.”

  I thought he would have been satisfied with that answer, but there was still something in Alex’s expression that didn’t quite seem right. “Well wouldn’t it be better if someone stayed here, in case the concussion happened suddenly or whatever?” Subtly raising his eyebrows at me, I didn’t take the more-than-obvious hint.

  “Concussions don’t affect someone so severely that quickly once it’s been an hour after the accident, so two hour intervals are usually adequate for keeping check.”

  Deciding enough was enough, Alex spelt it out plainly for anyone to see. “Why don’t you sit down? You look more and more exhausted each time I see you. Plus then you can make sure I don’t have concussion.” With those puppy-dog eyes, it was impossible for me to say no.

  “I guess I could hide away in here for a few hours...” Lowering myself into the chair, I gave a sigh of relief as I could feel all my muscles relax in an instant. “Holy crap, I haven’t sat on something this comfy in years.”

  For a couple of seconds, he sat there, smiling at me, before a troubled look passed over his face. “I’ve just realised, I haven’t ask what your name was.”

  “It’s Jodie,” I murmured, beginning to fight against the drowsiness that was slowly taking over my body. “My name’s Jodie.”

  Without warning, I let out a huge yawn. “Shh,” I faintly remember Alex saying, “just take a nap, I’ll wake you up in a couple of hours.” Finally letting my eyes shut, I felt something being draped over me, before letting a deep sleep wash consume my consciousness.

 

  No more weird dreams entered my head, thankfully, as I woke up and didn’t want to go back to sleep the very same instant, something I hadn’t experienced in a _very_ long time. The surroundings that stared back at me were only half-familiar; I knew that I was in a patient’s room from the empty bed, but I didn’t know _why_ I had fallen asleep here. “Aw crap,” I whispered as the realisation dawned on me, “I’m going to be in such deep shit when they find out I’ve been sleeping here.” And then all at once, I remembered why I had been here – and how I’d seemingly failed at that. “Guess I’d better get back to the paperwork then.” Groaning in my head, I stood up, removing Alex’s hoodie off of me... Wait, I thought as I stopped myself in my tracks, he couldn’t have gone if he left this here, unless... Thankfully, my crazy daydream was put to a halt as Alex walked back in, a cup in one hand and a packet of food in the other.

  “Hey, catch,” he smiled as he threw the food at me. “You look like you need something to eat.” Managing to completely miss, I picked the packet up off the floor, and felt the breath rush out of me as I found myself staring at Oreos. “Sorry, I didn’t know what you liked, so I just got you those.”

  “Oreos... are the best thing... ever.” It was almost too much for me to deal with, and so I ripped the packet open before shoving two Oreos into my mouth, savouring their delicious sweetness. About five seconds later, I realised how stupid I must have looked. “Sorry, I haven’t had anything to eat in... twelve hours?” Looking at my watch, I saw it was quarter-to-nine, meaning I’d been asleep for nearly eight hours. And that my shift had finished about four hours ago.

  “Surely that’s not healthy – you’re the doctor here, you should know this.” Staring at me with concern, Alex sat down on the edge of the bed. “Tell me honestly, when’s the last time you ate proper food? And I don’t mean microwave or ‘just add water’ stuff.”

  “You can barely talk when you’re holding noodles,” I mumbled, annoyed. “I’m not sure... maybe a month ago? Or more... I don’t know, I don’t really keep track on stuff like that.”

  Standing up, he looked at me sympathetically. “Has your shift finished yet?”

  “Yes,” I replied, confused.

  Setting the noodles down on the side-table, Alex put on his hoodie. “Let me go and get discharged, and then I’ll get you some real food, okay?”

  “What? No,” I shook my head, “you don’t need to. I’m fine, honestly.”

  “Too bad, I insist.”

  Struggling for reasons not to go, I argued back. “I can’t exactly go out wearing this,” I motioned towards my scrubs.

  “Then go get changed while I discharge myself,” he spoke charmingly with that dazzling smile, and so I couldn’t resist him.

  “Okay,” I answered, dazed, “I’ll meet you at the entrance in ten minutes.” Giving me one last smile, Alex headed out the door, giving me a couple of seconds to return back down off my high. Once I was back in reality, I hurried towards my lockers, completely beyond excited about what was going to happen next; it took me about five attempts to get my key into the lock, that’s how nervous I was getting. Pulling out my normal clothes as fast as I could, I stopped when I heard a distant cough. And then realised who it was. “You can come out now, Aimee.”

  “Sure,” she sighed as she appeared from round the side of the lockers, “make it sound like I was spying on you.”

  “Well were you?”

  “No! I was waiting to see where the hell you’d been! We were meant to leave like two hours ago, y’know.” The tone in her voice made it sound like she was suspicious of what I had been up to.

  “Yeah... I’m not going home,” I yelled over to her as I headed into the toilets to change. “I’ve made plans.”

  Thankfully, Aimee didn’t get angry with me – quite the opposite actually. “And would these plans happen to be with a certain cute patient?”

  “...Maybe.” It was impossible to suppress the smile on my face, but it didn’t matter because she couldn’t see me anyway.

  “I freaking _told you so_! You know what this means now, don’t you?”

  “No, what?” I questioned as I came out of the toilets, fully dressed and ready to go.

  With an evil smirk on her face, Aimee told me. “It means that I will now be forever in control of every decision that you make because I’m just that awesome, okay?”

  “Yeah, dream on,” I laughed at her as I went to leave, throwing my borrowed pen in her face. As soon as I was out of the locker room, it took nearly all my willpower to stop me from skipping down the corridor in such glee, wanting to get to the entrance as fast as I could (well, without having to resort to running).

  “Hey, wait up!” Turning around, I saw Alex strolling casually towards me. “Trying to escape already? I didn’t think I was _that_ bad.”

  “No,” I replied a little breathlessly, “I just thought that you might have already been outside, so I didn’t want you to wait for ages in case...”

  The sweet sound of his laughter reached my ears. “Relax, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere.”

  Unable to do anything other than smile, I felt a warm glow spread inside me as I walked towards the entrance with Alex – before all of a sudden, I found an unexpected question escaping from my lips. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Huh?” He looked just as puzzled as I felt.

  “I-I mean... why are you letting me sleep in your chair and buying food for me and being... _nice_?”

  “Well,” even though Alex looked slightly startled, he still managed to answer, “you did take care of me after I’d been a twat, so it’s my way of saying thank you.”

  “Oh.” Of course that’s what he was doing; there was never a chance of him liking me. Aimee was surely going to be a dead person when I next saw her.

  Continuing to walk, I felt as my eyes began to sting, and before I could stop it, a tear managed to escape from one of my eyes. “Hey, what’s up?” As more tears fell, I was unable to reply, causing Alex to wrap his arms around me in an attempt to comfort me. “Come on,” he tried to cheer me up, “remember what I said before, about you being too pretty to be upset?” As soon as I heard that, the tears began to dry up.

  I pulled away so I could look at his face. “You... you seriously remember that?”

  “Of course I do,” he smiled at me, “how could I forget the face of that little girl?”

  “Well obviously you did,” I muttered, and once again he laughed.

  “Okay, I’ll admit that, and I’m very sorry about it,” he softy spoke as he put his hands on either side of my face, “but I still think about her all these years later.” At that moment, my heart started to beat furiously, unsure of what was about to come next, even if it was pretty obvious – his head inched its way closer to mine, letting his lips fall softly onto mine as they melted together. Everything felt so right in that moment, like I’d finally found someone to bring me back to sanity (even if one look at his smile did send me off into the clouds). I got so caught up in it all that when we finally parted lips, I didn’t know what to do with myself. “So, you ready to go eat?”

  “Sure,” I dreamily sighed as we walked to the entrance, my hand finding its way into Alex’s. “You know you smell of noodles, right?”

  “You say it like it’s a bad thing,” he shamelessly chuckled as he pulled me closer towards him, kissing the top of my head; it was good to know that for once, life had given me a break.


End file.
